US election 2024: Inside Kamala Harris' grim election night party

Much like Hillary Clinton, who hosted her election night bash under a great glass ceiling eight years ago, Harris chose a richly symbolic locale for her election night celebrations, Howard University in Washington D.C.

Howard is one of America’s historic Black colleges, educating generations of African Americans in spite of the country’s historically discriminatory universities.

The small lawn, ringed by elegant Georgian-looking brick buildings, was packed with students. Early in the evening, Howard’s gospel choir belted out Oh Happy Day, followed by a hip hop dance group. It was meant to embody the “joy” Harris’ team claimed to have brought back to politics. Mere hours later, joy was very hard to come by.

At the time of writing, former President Donald Trump looks to be ahead in almost all swing states. He’s outperforming in his heartland, particularly Florida. The New York Times’ infamousneedle even has a narrow likelihood that Trump will win the nationwide popular vote, a feat only one Republican Presidential Candidate has accomplished since 1988 (George W. Bush in 2004).

Trump, who to many, seems one of the most divisive candidates in modern political history, has succeeded in bringing a diverse group of voters together behind him to accomplish a rare feat for a Republican.

Democrats don’t want to talk. Democrats don’t even want other people to talk. I flagged three members of the gospel choir down to speak to me in the media pen. They were keen to chat (“You come from New Zealand?”) but they were swiftly ushered away.

Stress abounded. Despite the small army of college officials, police and, secret service, no one bothered to enforce the campus’ non-smoking policy, which was widely flouted.

There was no silver lining for the Dems. Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas who might have provided a fun surprise flip managed to hold his seat. The Democrats’ Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio was projected to lose his seat to the hard right Bernie Moreno and with it the Democrats’ chances of retaining the Senate. That means at least two years in which Trump has a chance to make the already conservative Supreme Court even more so — the Dobbs v Jackson case might just have been the start.

Just before midnight, they flipped the switch on CNN, and attempted to rouse the crowd with an Adele remix of Rolling in the Deep. What kind of a person tries to cheer people up with Adele? Perhaps the Dems really are as out of touch as Donald Trump says.

At 12.45am, Harris’ campaign officials told the crowd she wouldn’t be appearing. Some campaign staff clearly anticipated this and began filing out earlier. The disappointment was palpable, like thousands of people left at the altar.

Harris wasn’t conceding — and fair enough, there are still some results to come in, but it’s very unlikely those results will tell us anything different to the results we already have.

Her campaign was telling close supporters to sit tight and wait for more results.

Despite the almost universally negative trend from results so far, campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon was positive, arguing the campaign had always plotted a path to victory through the northern “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where Trump is winning, but counting is slow.

“[W]e’ve known all along that our clearest path to 270 electoral votes lies through the Blue Wall states and we feel good about what we’re seeing,” Dillon‘s email said.

It’s not clear whether that optimism will last. Adele certainly wasn’t helping things.

“We could have had it all!” she cried.

Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018. His travel to the United States was assisted by the US Embassy in Wellington.